Sinister: She wore gold shoes with diamante, like Kylie wore on TV

[robin stout]

David put his two cents in:

<< I think the thing that we are, for which we can't ever seem to agree on a 
word, is a valuable and positive thing. The exaggerated or affected version 
of this thing is called 'twee', and that's perhaps how some of us are seen 
and labelled from the outside.. >>

I think David is very wise. I don't know what I'm going to do with those two 
cents in Wales, though. Probably try stuffing them in vending machines to 
see if they give me crisps. I wish that they would. I haven't had any money 
to spend all weekend, so have been re-using teabags and living on tins. 
Well, I tried living on tins but I kept falling off. Last night I was so 
bored at being in on a Bank Holiday Sunday that me and my housemate set up a 
bar in the living room to pretend we were in the pub. It would have been fun 
except I was thrown out for flicking coins on the bar. People keep giving me 
free food so I don't waste away. Yesterday someone gave me a cake and a 
mango. I'm not sure what to do with the mango. I think I'll put it on the 
sideboard and look at it. It scares me. We don't have mangos in 
Kidderminster, you see.

During our 'pub' conversation we were reading Cosmopolitan. Apparently my 
"Sex Animal" is a dolphin. Not quite sure what I'm supposed to hold on to, 
but okay, whatever they say. I told my friend about how I know someone who 
writes articles for Take A Break Magazine, you know, the one that has 
stories like "My husband shot my dog and had him made into shoes but I still 
love him". Apparently, this friend of mine has sent in a story on how she 
overcame her fear of crocodiles, but, because she'd made it all up and 
didn't have any photos of herself with a crocodile, she sent in one of my 
sister instead. Needless to say my sister wasn't to pleased.

I've decided that writing for Take A Break sounds like a good idea. I would 
write about how I am a bigamist with four wives, who i see on a four-week 
cycle under the pretence of a job working in submarines. Coincidentally, 
these four wives are best friends and are constantly telling each other how 
great their husbands (me) are, and how it's such a shame that the others 
can't meet him, because whenever i'm 'off the submarine' all they want to do 
is have me to themselves for hot and steamy nights of bonking. So I'm 
married to these women because I figure that it is my duty to make women 
happy, but the one woman I truly love, a barmaid called Glenda, is actually 
having it off with the vicar's wife! Oh, how shall I ever be truly happy?

I reckon I could get a few quid for that one.

The funny thing about this debate on 'twee' is that it's been happening on 
Sinister, off and on, for the last squillion years. It's an eternal mystery 
of the universe. I reckon we'll be arguing about it for years and years only 
to come to the conclusion that 'twee' is good and bad *at the same time* 
and, anyway, lets all just love one another, I'm having a party on Tuesday 
and I've booked a naked lady to jump out of a cake. Something like that.

If you type in 'twee' into the Sinister Archive, you get this: 
http://www.missprint.org/cgi-bin/anylistsearch.cgi?query=twee&list=sinister&smode=Phrase

I had a look through some of the posts that appeared, and decided I liked 
this comment from Nick Dastoor the best:

<< Are you happy for Belle & Sebastian to be pigeonholed as 'twee'?
You see I think that's pretty faint praise. I'd say that an example
of a song that is 'excessively sentimental' (Collins Dictionary) is
something like 'Tomorrow' from 'Annie'. Is this the kind of music
you see as B&S's musical antecedent? >>

Of course, that comment was written in 1924, when we were all wearing 
knickerbockers and worrying about the corrupting effect of mass importation 
of 'bananas' from the Indies, but I think it's still relevant today.

It's not that i'm offended by being seen as twee because in fact i am hard, 
or anything like that. I just think it is an inaccurate label, applied when 
all people really mean is they appreciate love, animals, biscuits, books, 
things that are scorned a little by your average gym instructor. I was once 
in a bookshop and a stranger called my coat twee. "No", I said, "It's not 
twee, it's tweed". Aww, I used to love that coat. I lost it on a train to 
Swansea and never saw it again.


xx Robin xx



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